1. Field of the Invention
This invention pertains to a pegbar display device having an identification bar for presentation of graphics, the device is commonly used for display of packages of meat and cheese in supermarket coolers, and for presentation of blister packaged small goods such as tools, auto parts and pet supplies, and the identification bar presents advertising and pricing.
2. The Prior Art
Display devices of this type are commonly termed peg bars. Peg bars are most often used and seen in businesses that retail groceries, specifically supermarkets, grocery stores and convenience stores. Peg bars are being used to display pre-packaged cheese slices and sliced sandwich meat. Peg bars are also used for blister packed goods such as small auto parts, electronic goods, cabinet hardware, screws and nails, lawn hardware, fishing tackle, photographic goods and the like.
The typical pegbar has a transverse structural bar fastened to a wall of some type. The structural bar serves as a beam for pegs which are supported in any one or more of a series of holes and slots along the length of the bar. The bar is loaded under both beam and torsional stress.
One well known existing pegbar is used by Kraft Foods and is subject of Mayer U.S. Pat. No. 3,986,613. This display device has an angle iron which is disposed with its apex down or in the V configuration. The front flange of the V-shape has vertical slots cut in through the top edge. The back flange of the V-shaped bar has an obround hole behind each of the front flange slots. The pegbar is a length of round steel wire having an upturned nose and a pair of spaced apart vertical flags on the back of the flag. The "flag" referred to is a flattened length of wire that has been hit in the flat dies on each side and the wire is changed from round to flat. In the just described pegbar, the back flag goes into the back flange hole and the front flange goes into the slot. The peg is then indexed with the flags being upright and the peg nose being upright, and the peg is retained in the bar by a round section in between the flags. The round section cannot be pulled through the front slot nor pushed through the back hole.
This pegbar does have its disadvantages. Firstly, it's heavy and material intensive. For example, a standard fourty-eight inch long bar with eleven pegs weighs 10 lbs. 5 ozs. At this weight the bar is made of the standardly used 3/16.times.11/2.times.11/2 angle iron which is the standard bar material. The pegbar tends to droop from both torsional and beam loading. For example, a full load of meat or cheese on this bar will droop the noses of the centrally located pegs well in excess of two inches as measured vertically. The V-bar simply does not have enough strength either in bending or torsion to support a full load of goods on its pegs.
Close vertical spacing of pegbars one above the other is important to retailers. By getting the pegbars as close as possible, more horizontal rows of goods can be displayed in a given length of floor space, shelf space, or cooler space. Conversely, a shorter cooler may be used with more efficient pegbars. The sag of known pegbars, such as just described, means the pegbars have to be spaced package height plus clearance and allowance for sag of the middle pegs and a row may be lost.
An important criterion for pegbars is that the peg be removable, together with unsold packages left on the peg, and the peg be refillable or reloadable from the back so that inventory can be sold on a FIFO (first in-first out) basis without loss of product that was previously unsold. This is critical in the retailing of perishables. In order to be loadable from the back, the peg must have a minimal cross section so that the pierced hole in the packages is not ripped out. The large vertical flags on the just discussed peg do tend to vertically tear the package holes, and then the package must be discounted or discarded. Another of the detrimental aspects of the prior pegbar is that the nose of the peg must be lifted almost three inches to remove the peg for reloading and for reinstallation of the loaded peg. Consequently, the pegbars had to be mounted above one another a height equal to package height plus about three inches. For some reason the pegs in this type of bar tend to bend at the edge of the flags, probably from excessive stress concentration. The V-section is also a trap for dust, product and debris.
Another type of pegbar is used by Oscar Mayer and is subject of Bolch U.S. Pat. No. 3,486,632. This pegbar utilizes what is more or less the same bar as the Kraft bar, but the Oscar Mayer bar has a flat in what was the obround hole in the rear flange. The peg is round and has an upturned nose but does not have rear flags. This peg has a machined or headed horizontal notch in the top of the back of the peg. The notch faces upward and engages the top flat in the back hole to index the peg and to retain the peg in the bar. This peg is easy to remove and install; it only has to be turned about sixty degrees and it will then either come out or go in. The problem with this peg is that it does not stay in well and it falls out too often, especially when customers pull upward on packages they are removing from the peg. Again, this pegbar is relatively heavy and a standard forty-eight bar with eleven pegs weighs about ten and one half pounds. The peg is also difficult to engage and index properly because it is very easy to push in too far or not enough.
One of the problems with pegbar display and merchandising is provision for display of pricing, ad copy, bar code information and pricing specials. Past practice has been to utilize label holders on shelving above, below or to a side of the pegbar display.
The Schweigert Company devised a bar type label holder that is not patented, and that extended transversely across a pegbar display either above or in front of the pegs. The Schweigert label holder, commonly called an I.D. bar, was held in place by metal brackets secured by bolts to the pegmount. The I.D. bar was bolted to the brackets and the entire structure was semipermanently assembled. The I.D. bar was fixed in place on the display.
Clamp Swing Pricing Company of Alameda, California devised a different type of I.D. bar that is shown in a PCT application IPN W082/03321 based on unissued U.S. Ser. No. 248,491 of Mar. 27, 1981, and that is clipped to a support peg that is interchangeable with a merchandising peg, insofar as both support and merchandise pegs will fit in any slot of Clamp Swing's support bars.
These devices both have some common problems. They both obstruct raising, removal and insertion of merchandise pegs. In order to accommodate the height obstructions, the merchandise pegs need additional and wasted vertical spacing. The additional vertical space enables the merchandise bars to be lifted and removed for refilling, and for refilled pegs to be reinstalled in the support bar. Typically, the problems of product information and pricing turn pegbar displays of packaged items into a disaster area. Manipulation of this information leads to spillage of product and refilling of product upsets the information displays.
The Schweigert device cannot be removed from the display without tools, but the Clamp Swing device pulls out and falls out if snagged by a package pulled upward off a lower merchandise peg. The Clamp Swing display device then falls on the consumer, or at the consumer's feet, or upon lower goods.
The retailer wants a pegbar system that will not accidentally come apart in use and which is easily loaded and reloaded and which is easy to rearrange into different configurations.